The Business of Branding: Websites Aren't Built in a Day

The Website Process

The illustration below outlines the various phases of a website assignment.

Making Your Case

For legal marketers who are considering updating their law firm's website, there are a few questions and issues they should address before embarking upon this critical marketing initiative:

1. How current is your technology? Website technology has come a long way in the past three to five years. If your content management system is older than three years, chances are there are better technologies in the market that are more suitable for your firm and its needs.

2. How current is your firm's content strategy? We live in an age of the scanning reader. If your current website is heavy with content and not visually engaging, even if the website ranks high in a Google Search, you are going to send visitors away.

3. How easy is it to navigate your website on a standard computer, tablet or smart phone? If the navigation on your site is not intuitive or if it's too difficult to find key information, potential buyers of your services are more likely going to pass you by.

4. Finally, more firms need to understand how important it is to have a mobile website. For the first time in history, sales of mobile devices surpassed the sales of computers in 2012 and that gap is only going to increase. Law firms need to realize that in the coming years, the majority of web searches will be done on a mobile device. Law firms that don't have a mobile website or “mobi” are not only going to be way behind the curve, they are going to be left behind!

Content Strategy and Website Audit

This is where your firm's website committee and your outside design partner should survey and research your current site and determine what works and what needs to be updated. When redesigning your website, make sure that you:

• Review all existing marketing and communications materials.
• Review any internal or external research and client surveys to determine how the firm is currently perceived in the market.
• Conduct interviews with your firm's current leadership and those coming up the ladder to leadership. These interviews provide two types of valuable insights that may be translated into messaging: 1) the values and benefits clients are looking for you to provide; and 2) internal perceptions about the firm.
• Review and examine your competitors' websites to determine what positions are already occupied.
• Finally, determine what the overall objective is for your new website by setting specific goals and strategies. This way, you will have everyone rowing in the same direction.

Once you have developed consensus on the strategic objectives of the firm's new website, a creative work plan may be developed. With a creative work plan, brand platform or firm positioning plan in place, and using recently collected information as guides, a visual and website messaging strategy may be developed and concepts presented to the website committee and others at the firm. The goal is to develop ambassadors for the new website who you can count on to be in your corner when other partners come around later questioning your website committee's decisions on direction, messaging and creative structure.

It is critical to the success of any new website that you have key leaders within the firm in your corner. Why? On the day your website launches, you will have critics and editors coming at the website team from every corner of the firm. The more you can include your lawyers along the way and the more ambassadors you have in your corner, the better positioned you will be when the website launches.

The amount of time it will take to complete these two sections are dependent upon the availability of your firm's attorneys for the interviews and the amount of time the website team takes in reviewing the submitted branding approach or the creative brief that will lay out the design and work plan for the revised website. In a perfect world, this takes four to six weeks. However, more often than not, it takes closer to eight to 10 weeks. After all, your lawyers are busy people and getting your web team together on a regular basis is also difficult. We suggest you set a schedule for your website team meetings and stick to it as this will keep your project moving forward in a timely manner.

Creative Concepts

Your new website should be unique to your firm and accomplish the strategic goals you determined at the start of this project. With a creative work plan and information architecture as guides, you and your design partner should work together to develop a visual strategy for the website. This type of presentation will demonstrate how your research and positioning strategy informed your conceptual approach. Using your overall goals as a guide, you should also consider and conceive other ways you may want to promote your updated website and the firm's brand (should it be updated).

Targeted design, based upon in-depth research, should always be one of your core objectives. Otherwise all you are doing is creating a website based on what you think may resonate with your attorneys, current clients and target audiences. Your firm's new website should not be thought of as simply a creative project but a strategic marketing and business development assignment.

Once the creative concept is approved ' generally an additional three to four weeks ' the next step is to work on developing and finalizing the information architecture for the website. Typically, multiple concepts should be designed and developed for presentation to the firm prior to your team making a selection that will result in a specific direction for the revised website. This is a collaborative process, however, that starts with an initial concept and incorporates the ideas and feedback that your committee suggests to the design team, revising the designs to achieve a final product that are in line with your goals.

All websites need to have a structure and base in place before putting the multiple elements together into a cohesive website design. The first two steps in designing and developing a website that is on target with your goals and effectively conveys your firm's messaging are a well-planned sitemap and a wireframe.

Sitemap and Wireframe

Think of a sitemap as your initial table of contents. It demonstrates, at a glance, the navigation and all the content that will fall underneath that particular header, while illustrating for the first time how the entire website will flow. It should also show all of the “global elements” that will appear on every page of your website. A sitemap is to web design what a blueprint is to a home. The benefits of developing and reviewing a sitemap of your revised website is that it will give you the opportunity to review and develop clear navigation so that you can see how key information may be found in every section. A sitemap also allows you to be proactive in developing your content while providing you with the first overarching view of the website. Finally, it saves time when building the wireframe.

The wireframe is a stripped-down version of your new website that includes no images, colors, content, etc. It simply lays the foundation for your future website design. It gives your firm the opportunity to review how the sitemap has “come to life” and provides an example of the creative direction of your updated website. The firm's wireframe shows where essential information will be placed and the basic structure of design pages. It helps to define the positioning of global and secondary navigation levels, as well as providing an area for widgets and other utilities you may elect to use such as social media icons. A good sitemap should also help demonstrate to the firm what a visitor's experience may be when he or she views the firm's new website.

There are many programs, such as Mockingbird, that assist with this process. These programs allow you to build a wireframe that is clickable and interactive. The benefits of a good wireframe are numerous, and it provides the secondary foundation for website design so that if you wish to make edits and/or changes, you can make them there before moving into the design phase. Once the wireframe has been approved, your website design should move quickly and more efficiently. The wireframe process involves team brainstorming which will create a better user experience. Unfortunately, this is one area where a number of firms simply rubber-stamp approval because they are afraid to ask for the assistance of someone on the design team to walk them through the wireframe slowly so that they can take notes and suggest changes. Law firms should pay more attention to the wireframe structure since it will save them money and time during the design and development phase of the firm's website.

The amount of time it will take to complete these two sections is also dependent upon the level of interest and action on the website team to make sure that the “bones” of the firm's new website are in line with your strategic and creative objectives for the revised website. In most cases, these two steps are generally reviewed too quickly, with one week spent on the sitemap and one on presentation of the wireframe. The time to develop the wireframe is generally two weeks, for an estimated total of three-five weeks for these two important phases.

At this juncture, the website team and the firm attorneys are eager to see the creative approaches and concepts for the website. They want to see images and messages. While the development of the sitemap and wireframe may not be the most engaging phases of your website redesign, they are critical steps to the success of the website project. It cannot be over-emphasized how spending more time reviewing your sitemap and wireframe will save both money and development time in the long run.

Conclusion

Already, we are at approximately at a minimum of four to six months and we have reached the halfway point in the website design process. In the second installment of this article, we will discuss the creative review process, the design phase and how fluid it can be, as well as the development of the site and content migration and/or input. In the interim, if you are considering a new website for your firm in the coming year, re-read the first part of this article to learn how you may structure your internal and external website team(s), recruit website ambassadors and manage expectations internally with regard to the website redesign time frame.

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Jeffrey Morgan is a Principal at Moir' Marketing Partners, a strategic branding and communications agency specializing in the success of professional service firms. You can reach him at [email protected] and connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter (@JeffreyMorganCA).

In the many years I have worked with law firms on the design and development of their websites, inevitably someone asks, “So, how long is this going to take?” Most often, this question is followed by an overly ambitious date from someone at the firm as to when they would like to have their new site up. More often than not, that date is simply unrealistic and while someone informs them of that, they never quite seem to hear the real answer to the original question.

So, why is there this disconnection? Why do law firms assume that one of their most important marketing communications tools can simply be designed and developed in a few short months? Effective websites take foresight and strategy. I'm not talking about solo practitioners and small local firms that can easily get by with the use of a creative website template. I'm referring to those midsized law firms with 50-plus attorneys that have a more sophisticated buyer of legal services as clients, principally in-house counsel and business owners. This audience of law firm clients are busy people and they are coming to your website because they have a problem that they need to have solved. They want their problem fixed effectively and efficiently, and they want to find the right person with demonstrable experience to handle their issue. Law firms with websites that appropriately and strategically distinguish themselves from their competitors are quickly learning that they gain an edge when they take the time to thoughtfully redesign and update their websites.

What follows is a step-by-step guide to building a law firm website, and suggestions on how to make this process much more smooth and collaborative, from the initial brand discovery phase through the launch stage, and beyond.

The Website Process

The illustration below outlines the various phases of a website assignment.

Making Your Case

For legal marketers who are considering updating their law firm's website, there are a few questions and issues they should address before embarking upon this critical marketing initiative:

1. How current is your technology? Website technology has come a long way in the past three to five years. If your content management system is older than three years, chances are there are better technologies in the market that are more suitable for your firm and its needs.

2. How current is your firm's content strategy? We live in an age of the scanning reader. If your current website is heavy with content and not visually engaging, even if the website ranks high in a Google Search, you are going to send visitors away.

3. How easy is it to navigate your website on a standard computer, tablet or smart phone? If the navigation on your site is not intuitive or if it's too difficult to find key information, potential buyers of your services are more likely going to pass you by.

4. Finally, more firms need to understand how important it is to have a mobile website. For the first time in history, sales of mobile devices surpassed the sales of computers in 2012 and that gap is only going to increase. Law firms need to realize that in the coming years, the majority of web searches will be done on a mobile device. Law firms that don't have a mobile website or “mobi” are not only going to be way behind the curve, they are going to be left behind!

Content Strategy and Website Audit

This is where your firm's website committee and your outside design partner should survey and research your current site and determine what works and what needs to be updated. When redesigning your website, make sure that you:

• Review all existing marketing and communications materials.
• Review any internal or external research and client surveys to determine how the firm is currently perceived in the market.
• Conduct interviews with your firm's current leadership and those coming up the ladder to leadership. These interviews provide two types of valuable insights that may be translated into messaging: 1) the values and benefits clients are looking for you to provide; and 2) internal perceptions about the firm.
• Review and examine your competitors' websites to determine what positions are already occupied.
• Finally, determine what the overall objective is for your new website by setting specific goals and strategies. This way, you will have everyone rowing in the same direction.

Once you have developed consensus on the strategic objectives of the firm's new website, a creative work plan may be developed. With a creative work plan, brand platform or firm positioning plan in place, and using recently collected information as guides, a visual and website messaging strategy may be developed and concepts presented to the website committee and others at the firm. The goal is to develop ambassadors for the new website who you can count on to be in your corner when other partners come around later questioning your website committee's decisions on direction, messaging and creative structure.

It is critical to the success of any new website that you have key leaders within the firm in your corner. Why? On the day your website launches, you will have critics and editors coming at the website team from every corner of the firm. The more you can include your lawyers along the way and the more ambassadors you have in your corner, the better positioned you will be when the website launches.

The amount of time it will take to complete these two sections are dependent upon the availability of your firm's attorneys for the interviews and the amount of time the website team takes in reviewing the submitted branding approach or the creative brief that will lay out the design and work plan for the revised website. In a perfect world, this takes four to six weeks. However, more often than not, it takes closer to eight to 10 weeks. After all, your lawyers are busy people and getting your web team together on a regular basis is also difficult. We suggest you set a schedule for your website team meetings and stick to it as this will keep your project moving forward in a timely manner.

Creative Concepts

Your new website should be unique to your firm and accomplish the strategic goals you determined at the start of this project. With a creative work plan and information architecture as guides, you and your design partner should work together to develop a visual strategy for the website. This type of presentation will demonstrate how your research and positioning strategy informed your conceptual approach. Using your overall goals as a guide, you should also consider and conceive other ways you may want to promote your updated website and the firm's brand (should it be updated).

Targeted design, based upon in-depth research, should always be one of your core objectives. Otherwise all you are doing is creating a website based on what you think may resonate with your attorneys, current clients and target audiences. Your firm's new website should not be thought of as simply a creative project but a strategic marketing and business development assignment.

Once the creative concept is approved ' generally an additional three to four weeks ' the next step is to work on developing and finalizing the information architecture for the website. Typically, multiple concepts should be designed and developed for presentation to the firm prior to your team making a selection that will result in a specific direction for the revised website. This is a collaborative process, however, that starts with an initial concept and incorporates the ideas and feedback that your committee suggests to the design team, revising the designs to achieve a final product that are in line with your goals.

All websites need to have a structure and base in place before putting the multiple elements together into a cohesive website design. The first two steps in designing and developing a website that is on target with your goals and effectively conveys your firm's messaging are a well-planned sitemap and a wireframe.

Sitemap and Wireframe

Think of a sitemap as your initial table of contents. It demonstrates, at a glance, the navigation and all the content that will fall underneath that particular header, while illustrating for the first time how the entire website will flow. It should also show all of the “global elements” that will appear on every page of your website. A sitemap is to web design what a blueprint is to a home. The benefits of developing and reviewing a sitemap of your revised website is that it will give you the opportunity to review and develop clear navigation so that you can see how key information may be found in every section. A sitemap also allows you to be proactive in developing your content while providing you with the first overarching view of the website. Finally, it saves time when building the wireframe.

The wireframe is a stripped-down version of your new website that includes no images, colors, content, etc. It simply lays the foundation for your future website design. It gives your firm the opportunity to review how the sitemap has “come to life” and provides an example of the creative direction of your updated website. The firm's wireframe shows where essential information will be placed and the basic structure of design pages. It helps to define the positioning of global and secondary navigation levels, as well as providing an area for widgets and other utilities you may elect to use such as social media icons. A good sitemap should also help demonstrate to the firm what a visitor's experience may be when he or she views the firm's new website.

There are many programs, such as Mockingbird, that assist with this process. These programs allow you to build a wireframe that is clickable and interactive. The benefits of a good wireframe are numerous, and it provides the secondary foundation for website design so that if you wish to make edits and/or changes, you can make them there before moving into the design phase. Once the wireframe has been approved, your website design should move quickly and more efficiently. The wireframe process involves team brainstorming which will create a better user experience. Unfortunately, this is one area where a number of firms simply rubber-stamp approval because they are afraid to ask for the assistance of someone on the design team to walk them through the wireframe slowly so that they can take notes and suggest changes. Law firms should pay more attention to the wireframe structure since it will save them money and time during the design and development phase of the firm's website.

The amount of time it will take to complete these two sections is also dependent upon the level of interest and action on the website team to make sure that the “bones” of the firm's new website are in line with your strategic and creative objectives for the revised website. In most cases, these two steps are generally reviewed too quickly, with one week spent on the sitemap and one on presentation of the wireframe. The time to develop the wireframe is generally two weeks, for an estimated total of three-five weeks for these two important phases.

At this juncture, the website team and the firm attorneys are eager to see the creative approaches and concepts for the website. They want to see images and messages. While the development of the sitemap and wireframe may not be the most engaging phases of your website redesign, they are critical steps to the success of the website project. It cannot be over-emphasized how spending more time reviewing your sitemap and wireframe will save both money and development time in the long run.

Conclusion

Already, we are at approximately at a minimum of four to six months and we have reached the halfway point in the website design process. In the second installment of this article, we will discuss the creative review process, the design phase and how fluid it can be, as well as the development of the site and content migration and/or input. In the interim, if you are considering a new website for your firm in the coming year, re-read the first part of this article to learn how you may structure your internal and external website team(s), recruit website ambassadors and manage expectations internally with regard to the website redesign time frame.

[IMGCAP(1)]

Jeffrey Morgan is a Principal at Moir' Marketing Partners, a strategic branding and communications agency specializing in the success of professional service firms. You can reach him at [email protected] and connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter (@JeffreyMorganCA).